Do words, sounds and images enter your brain mysteriously
and stay there? Do you wonder where they
come from? And are you amazed at how
long they stay? I do. It borders on creepy. Here’s what happened Friday morning.
I was home minding my own business, doing the Chicago Tribune
crossword puzzle at the kitchen counter and drinking coffee. My smart speaker was off, my wife was
sleeping, and it was a dead quiet morning when the notes of a John Prine tune popped
into my head. I had neither heard the
song recently, read about it or John Prine, nor run across the lyrics or the
theme they represent.
I had read the whole Tribune, cut out some articles, talked
to my son on the phone, made myself breakfast, and settled into the crossword
puzzle. Nothing about that song was any
part of my morning.
And then out of nowhere I started whistling the tune, both verse
and chorus. It was Come Back to Us Barbara Lewis, Hare
Krishna, Beauregard. As I whistled, I could hear John Prine’s voice
inside my head, and the lyrics line by line, word for word. Not only that, I pictured the album cover the
song was on, Common Sense. I have
it in the shack.
I tried to keep my mind on the puzzle. It was an annoyingly difficult crossword. The
puzzles get increasingly harder each day.
Monday’s is the easiest and Saturday’s can take most of the day if you
let it. As I pondered clues like “with diffidence”
(answer: shyly) and “divination” (augury) John Prine’s 1975 song pushed
the April 5, 2024 puzzle right out of my head.
A song, mind you, that played only in my head in a kitchen
perfectly quiet except for my whistling.
The reasons for it invading my thoughts are unknown. The song starts with Prine painting a
portrait of a troubled woman, Barbara Lewis, in the first verse. I could see her clearly. Strung out perhaps. Or mentally ill. Maybe both.
The last time that I saw her
She was standing in the rain
With her overcoat under her arm
Leaning on a horsehead cane
She said, "Carl, take all the money"
She called everybody Carl
My spirit's broke, my mind's a joke
And getting up's real hard
I was traveling in Europe,
then North Africa, and Europe again in 1975.
I probably encountered more new and different people that year, some
call them strangers, than any other year of my life. The 60’s weren’t far behind us. Characters like Barbara Lewis, both men and
women, crossed my path often.
I call these persons characters
as if they are on a stage or depicted in a novel. Trouble is, they are real people living their
lives, however difficult or jumbled that life might be. When face to face with those living on the
edge I was fascinated, a little fearful, and at the time worried for them. They may not have wanted my concern, but it
was there all the same. Prine was
concerned too. The chorus he wrote tells
us that.
Don't you know her when you see her?
She grew up in your backyard
Come back to us
Barbara Lewis Hare Krishna Beauregard
The confused and
disheveled woman you see now? With the
horsehead cane that calls everyone Carl?
She was a girl you knew when you were a kid. Maybe your friend. Prine wanted that girl back, as she used to
be. Maybe you know a girl like that too.
I had reserved a lap lane
at the Ottawa YMCA for early afternoon.
While swimming a nonstop half mile the lyrics and music surrounding
Barbara Lewis kept going through my head.
Lap swimmers can be antisocial. In
fairness, swimmers can’t talk when inhaling through their mouth and exhaling
underwater through their nose. It is a
great time to think, though. John Prine
and Barbara Lewis soaked up my entire forty-minute swim and five-minute cool
down.
Remember the 1977
Spielberg movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind? Richard Dreyfus plays electrician Roy Neary, an ordinary guy investigating unusual power outages at
night for the power company near his home near Muncie, Indiana. While pulled over on a blacktop road checking
power lines three brightly lit aircraft fly over his pickup truck. He becomes convinced the pilots are extra-terrestrials
in UFO’s. After that, Roy Neary appears very
distracted to those who know him best.
That wouldn’t have been so
bad, but as strange things begin to happen in both Muncie and other communities
on the national news, he develops an obsession with a particular shape. One night at dinner with his family he used
his fork to fashion his mashed potatoes and what was left in the bowl into a small
model of a mountain. Attempts to ask him
what he was doing went unanswered. His
family was concerned.
The next day he hauled a
huge pile of dirt into the family room and constructed a giant model of the
same mountain with even more detail. By then
he was ignoring his family, talking to himself, and acting truly crazy. His
wife gathered the kids and fled their home.
Before you know it, Roy
Neary is speeding northwest nonstop on the interstate. He ends up outside Hulett, Wyoming where he skids
his truck to a sudden stop.
Looming before him is Devils
Tower National Monument where a majestic lava butte rises out of the western
plain. It’s famous. You’ve seen it. Devil’s Tower matches the shape he first
created with his mashed potatoes. It was
as if that mountain drew him to Wyoming against his will. Roy Neary was totally controlled by a force
outside himself that wouldn’t let him think of anything else. You probably know what happened next and may even
be hearing the five notes of the movie’s title song in your head right now.
I continued thinking about
John Prine and his song about Barbara Lewis as the day went on, but I wasn’t
nearly as absorbed as Roy Neury was by Devil’s Tower in Close Encounters of
the Third Kind. I’m OK. Don’t worry about me. Retired people can do these things.
After my swim at the Ottawa
Y, I stopped at the Northside Kroger to pick up a few things off the shopping
list. As I was hunting for Thomas’
English Muffins a young woman stocking shelves atop a step stool spoke to me.
“So, it was you doing the whistling!
What is that song?”
I was embarrassed. Sometimes I don’t realize I’m whistling. And sometimes I’m loud.
“It’s an old John Prine
song, probably before your time.”
“Try me. What’s the name of it?”
“Come Back to us, Barbara
Lewis, Hare Krishna, Beauregard.”
“Oh…yeah, I don’t know
that one.”
I spotted my English
muffins and headed quietly to the next aisle.
“Don’t stop whistling
because of me,” she said.
I did. The lyrics that matched the tune going
through my head, silently after being called out by the Kroger girl stocking
shelves, were these two verses:
Selling Bibles at the airports
Buying Quaaludes on the phone
Hey, you talk about a paper route
She's a shut-in without a home
God save her, please, she's nailed her knees
To some drugstore parking lot
Hey, Mr. Brown, turn the volume down
I believe this evening's shot
Prine goes from describing
Barbara’s appearance and demeanor to pointing out her behavior. I never sold books in airports, nor bought Quaaludes,
but I encountered people who did. They
were my age and younger, on the tail end of the hippie movement, possibly
exploited, and appeared to be lost. I
could have been wrong, and they may not have welcomed my pity, but I felt sad when
I saw people in those situations. I
wanted to help them find better ways to live their lives, but I didn’t know
how.
I worked temp jobs through
a government funded agency called Manpower in Bloomington-Normal during my
senior year at ISU. The day labor jobs they
offered came mostly from moving company drivers needing last-minute help unloading
the belongings of newly transferred families from a semi into their new homes. I had to cut class to take those jobs and
didn’t do it often.
But when I did, I was
often paired to work with alcoholics from the Home Sweet Home Mission. Those able to work loved Manpower because it
was close to the mission, and they always paid out at the end of each day. I had a car. When the job was over and I was leaving the Manpower
office with my day’s wages, those guys I worked with would almost always ask me
for a ride to the nearest liquor store. I can see their faces still.
It was that same earn and
immediately spend economy that Prine described as selling Bibles for Quaaludes;
bust your ass moving furniture into a newly built tri-level in the morning, buy
a fifth of Old Thompson and a couple bottles of Thunderbird wine for the
afternoon while living in a homeless shelter.
As for Barbara’s doings on
her knees in that parking lot, I always shared John’s plea for a higher power, or
anyone else, to rescue sex workers from their fate. “God save her please” or him, or them. Please.
And in this verse, John
Prine delivers one of his famous hooks, that line in each song that stands out to
the listener because it rings so very true.
It’s italicized below.
Can’t you picture her next Thursday? Can you picture her at all?
At the Hotel Boulderado, at the dark end of the hall
I gotta shake myself and
wonder, why she even bothers me
For
if heartaches were commercials, we'd all be on TV
The Hotel Boulderado,
built in 1909, is still in business, no doubt updated since 1973. Today on their website you can get a room
with a king bed for somewhere around $350.
I hope they put some lighting in the dark end of that hall where John
Prine caught a glimpse of Barbara Lewis.
Prine claims not to know
why Barbara Lewis bothers him, acknowledging his own troubles, but we all know
why. John Prine was able to feel and explain
the pain of others in his songs. That’s
what made him great.
He applied that ability to
so many songs and characters: Sam Stone, Donald and Lydia, the
old couple in Hello in There, himself the jilted boyfriend in Far
From Me, the beautiful and tragic song at the end of his career Summer’s
End. He made a career out of describing
the compassion he felt for real life pain. His lyrics helped us see and feel that
pain and be compassionate too.
Unless you saw John Prine
live and heard him introduce his songs, you didn’t get to know where they came
from or how they came about. We have the
benefit of reading his thoughts about the song Come Back to Us, Barbara
Lewis…in the liner notes of John Prine Live, released in 1988. He explained that he began working on the
song in the summer of ’73 during a tour of Colorado ski towns with Ramblin’
Jack Elliott. “What I had in mind was
this girl who left home, did drugs, did religion, did husbands, and ended up
doing diddley.”
John Prine was taken from us by Covid in April of 2020 during
the pandemic. We lost something when he
died that I don’t think has been replaced, an American minstrel poet who sows
understanding and concern for others in ways that we cannot help but acknowledge. We need artists like him that help us find acceptance
and understanding of one another. If you
hear of one, let me know.
